Patrick Awuah

“The question of transformation in Africa is a question of leader.” - Patrick Awuah

He came to United States to attend liberal art college. After graduating, he was hired by Microsoft to Design and implement new software. He was getting great pay, and he had a good life until he had his own children. He said he started thinking how his kids are going to view Africa, their father’s homeland. It was then when he moved back home and talked to people. Ask them and listened what their concern were. He said a lot of people talked about corruption in the government and weak institutions. Then he started questioning who these people are in government and where they are coming from. It was citizen’s peers and friends who had just higher education than the other. He saw a problem of how they haven’t been educated right. “Every society must be intention about educating its leaders” said Patrick Awuah. He wanted to help students become ethical entrepreneur; educating young minds so they can grow up and become great leaders of society.

A student from his class wrote an e-mail to him saying “I am thinking now.” being taught to think rather than just a technical skill to get a job might have been the eye opening moment for the students. He involves his students in education by providing real world problems. As a student, knowing that their voice and their opinion matters, and the fact that they have capability to impact the society was a big deal. On their own, students started questioning “can we create a perfect society?” He’s been teaching for past couple years and he has been getting great feedbacks from where ever his students are working, reporting how they are all brilliant, have passion, persistent. He emphasized the manner how we educate leader is fundamental: leaders should be courageous, think critically and analytically, ability to confront complex problem, and deal with ambiguity.